In Religion in Plain View, Sally Promey shows how evangelical Christianity, capitalism, and imperialism have co-produced the public display of American religion. Promey moves across geographies from New England to California to Hawaii, considering modes of display from street art and vehicle décor to monuments, architecture, and more. She concludes that the exhibitionary aesthetics of American religion serve as a Protestant technology of White nation formation. The book introduces four generative concepts– testimonial aesthetics, material establishment, heritage fabrication, and landshaping– for the study of religion, visual culture, race, and colonialism across diverse geographic and temporal contexts. This roundtable brings together a diverse panel of scholars to consider the utility of Promey’s analysis from a range of disciplinary and institutional locations.
| Sally M. Promey | sally.promey@yale.edu | View |